Outside Chance

by Lyndon Stacey

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Ben said, and hesitated. She was Lisa; familiar and comfortable. Part of his life. But it was difficult even to picture her with Jeta around. ‘Yes, she is.’

  ‘You don’t sound too sure,’ Nico said, laughing. ‘My sister has that effect.’ Clicking his tongue at Mouse, he put his hand down to offer her a piece of toast, but after sniffing it politely she turned her head away.

  Jeta was there now, weaving her way between the tables with sinuous grace. She gave Ben a provocative glance from under her lashes as she passed, her hip lightly brushing his shoulder.

  Was it provocative? Or was that just how he’d read it? He decided that for his own peace of mind he would do much better to move.

  Leaving the canteen behind, he took a deep breath and rang Eddie Truman as he walked across the field. He answered after three rings, his impatience evident straight away.

  ‘Ben! Where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to reach you.’

  ‘Calm down, Truman. I’m not one of your stable lads,’ Ben reminded him. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I can’t tell you over the phone. How soon can you get here – ten minutes? Half an hour?’

  ‘No way. I’m in Sussex – it’ll be two hours at the very least. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing in Sussex?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘Have you got a lead?’ Truman asked eagerly.

  Immediately Ben felt sympathy. ‘No, sorry. This is another job. Something I was already working on. Look I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

  As he put the phone back in his pocket, Jakob came up.

  ‘Duka is working well today.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Ben suddenly realised that, while he’d been talking to Truman, he’d stopped by one of the schooling areas, where Ferenc was putting the white Andalusian through his paces. ‘Oh. Yes, he is.’

  ‘The curse of the mobile telephone,’ Jakob mused, correctly interpreting Ben’s confusion. ‘You can never be alone. They …’ he brought his hands together expressively ‘… they shrink the world.’

  ‘Yeah. They have their advantages but they’ve certainly put paid to a whole heap of excuses. But I’m afraid I really do have to go. What it is to be wanted,’ he joked.

  ‘Yes, you must go. And when you come back, you and I will find a horse that you can ride.’

  ‘Me?’ Ben was jolted. ‘But I don’t want to ride, I told you.’

  Jakob nodded. ‘Yes, I know what you said, but I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Well, I meant it.’ He started to walk away but, undeterred, Jakob fell in beside him.

  ‘Fear itself isn’t weakness, you know,’ he said, after a moment. ‘The weakness is not admitting it. Every time you turn from it, you give it more power over you. You mustn’t let it rule your life, Ben.’

  ‘Has it ever occurred to you that I might be quite happy as I am?’

  ‘No. I’ve seen your eyes. The way you watch Nico and the others. Whatever you may tell me, your eyes betray you.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘I’m not!’ Jakob caught hold of his arm. ‘Ben, let me help you. Please?’

  ‘Why do you want to? What does it matter?’

  ‘Because …’ the Hungarian paused, rolling his eyes heavenwards. ‘Oh God, this sounds like a bad movie, but you remind me of my son, Stefan.’

  Ben shook his arm free and continued walking.

  ‘You’re right. It does sound like a bad movie. So, where is he now?’

  ‘He died in a car crash, many years ago. He was a jockey, a very good one, but he never had a chance to prove himself.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I’m not your son, and I have my own life to live, in whatever way I choose!’ Jakob’s persistence had unsettled Ben and he felt that bringing up the subject of his son’s death was akin to emotional blackmail. ‘Now, I really have to go.’

  ‘But you will come back?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Ben threw the word over his shoulder as Jakob slowed and dropped behind but, after a few steps, he stopped and turned. ‘Yes. I’ll be back. After all, I’ve got a job to do.’

  Jakob smiled. ‘Ah yes. The job.’

  7

  BEN ARRIVED AT Castle Ridge just before midday and found Truman on the drive in front of his house, just about to get into his Range Rover. The trainer was wearing olive corduroys and a hefty sweater, topped off with the obligatory waxed jacket, and carried a pair of expensive-looking binoculars slung round his neck. His skin looked sallow under the freckles and his eyes hooded. Ben thought he looked exhausted.

  ‘Ah, Ben. At last. Come on, get in – I’m just going up to watch the last lot.’

  ‘Right, but can I just let my dog out first to stretch her legs? She’s been in the car for a couple of hours and she might need a pee.’

  ‘Bring her along. She can get in the back with mine and have a run when the horses have finished.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’

  As Ben let Mouse out, Truman opened the tailgate of the Range Rover and two Jack Russells and a bull terrier spilled out on to the gravel in a kind of yapping, growling whirlwind.

  ‘Get back in!’ he ordered, and two of them did. The third, and smallest, was picked up unceremoniously by its scruff and dumped with its fellows.

  Mouse approached Truman and sniffed his trouser leg suspiciously before looking up at him with just the faintest wag of her long, whiskery tail. However, Ben’s suggestion that she jump into the back of the man’s car was greeted with a look that unmistakably said, ‘You cannot be serious!’

  ‘Go on. It’ll do you good to mix with your own kind for a change,’ Ben said firmly, lifting her in.

  She turned round and sat like a débutante amongst prostitutes, neither looking to the right or the left but instead gazing imploringly at Ben as the hatch was slammed.

  Truman drove down the drive and along the road for a quarter of a mile before turning into a narrow lane. The Range Rover climbed steeply and his foot was heavy on the accelerator until the rump of the hindmost horse came into sight. The column of walking thoroughbreds stepped off the tarmac on to the verge as the vehicle slowly coasted past. There were maybe thirty in total, money on the hoof; the representation of the dreams of dozens of people tied up in a fragile bundle of flesh, bones and muscle.

  The stable-lads and lasses wore an assortment of navy and brown jodhpurs with windproof jackets, and were muffled up in gloves and scarves against the cold north-easterly. Halfway along the string Ben saw Mikey mounted on a lean chestnut, but he was looking straight ahead and didn’t see Ben.

  Truman was apparently deep in thought and had said nothing so far – surprising, given his volubility on the telephone – so Ben broke the silence.

  ‘How’s my brother coming along? Are you pleased with him?’

  ‘Not too bad.’ Passing the lead horse, the Range Rover began to pick up speed once more. ‘He’s riding at Wincanton tomorrow. He’s got a couple of quite decent rides, too, because Rollo’s picked up a three-day suspension. You should come and watch. I’m going; I’ll give you a lift if you like.’

  ‘Thanks. That’d be good.’

  Truman turned off the lane through an open field gate and followed the rising crest of the hill to its highest point, where he swung the vehicle round to face the slope and turned the engine off.

  ‘We had another email early this morning,’ Truman said, as soon as the diesel motor stopped turning over. ‘I have to have the money by Friday. I’m to put it in a black bin-bag, drive to Fordingbridge car park and wait there with my mobile phone for further instructions.’

  ‘Fordingbridge? Why there, I wonder? Does Ford know where the emails are being sent from yet?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s no help. The first was from Tunbridge Wells and this morning’s was from a library in Basingstoke. There’s no problem finding the terminals they were sent from, but no way of tracing the user unless they were stupid enough to log on under their r
eal name, and there’s not much hope of that.’

  ‘So what’s the plan? Do you pay up?’

  ‘What else can I do? You haven’t come up with anything at all?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He gave Truman a summary of his dealings with Rackham and the ALSA group. ‘And last night four of them were in Haywards Heath making trouble for a touring horse circus that I’m doing an article on. God! They’d hate me calling them that, but I don’t know how else to describe them.’

  ‘You spend your working life around horses, but you don’t ride, Mikey says.’

  ‘It’s not a necessary qualification.’

  ‘But you used to ride for your father, didn’t you?’

  Ben sighed inwardly. Questions; always questions. Why did he always have to explain himself?

  ‘Yes, I did, but I haven’t ridden for a long time,’ he said, hoping that would be sufficient; it was, probably because Eddie Truman wasn’t a rider himself and didn’t understand what an addictive habit it could be.

  ‘So you’re confident that ALSA have nothing to do with it?’ he said, switching back to his original topic.

  ‘Well, as sure as I can be. I don’t know what else I can do; I think I’ve worn my welcome a bit thin there, to say the very least. To be honest, if they had got Cajun King, I shouldn’t think they’d be getting involved in all this other stuff or inviting a journalist to interview them. Anyway, I imagine Ford is on their case, too?’

  ‘Yes, I think so, but he doesn’t tell me much – just that they’re doing all they can and I’ll be the first to know if they come up with anything. So what will you do next?’

  ‘That depends on you. What else can you tell me that you aren’t telling the police? Who else have you upset?’

  Truman took off his cap and scratched his balding head.

  ‘Anyone who’s as successful in business as I’ve been is bound to have made a few enemies on the way,’ he said, replacing the cap and turning his green-eyed gaze on Ben. ‘And I suppose there’ve been a couple of people who’ve left my employment muttering threats about revenge, but I can’t think of anyone who’d go so far as this to get back at me – at least none who’d have the wit and resources to do it. I mean, it’s one thing to harbour a grudge, but quite another to organise and carry out something of this scale.’

  ‘Mm. That’s the thing, isn’t it? And, having pulled it off, where the hell do you keep a race-fit thoroughbred? I suppose the police can’t organise much of a search in case they put the wind up the kidnappers.’

  ‘They sent a couple of their young female officers in plain clothes to put posters up in all the tack shops and feed stores within a fifty mile radius of Guildford, saying just that a bay thoroughbred has been stolen from his stable and asking people to report any unexpected new arrivals. They’ve notified riding schools, too, but of course we might be looking in completely the wrong area. It’s a needle in a bloody haystack.’

  ‘And you’re not even sure you’ve got the right haystack.’

  Truman grunted. ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘So how are you coping?’

  ‘It’s been bloody awful, but when you’ve got ninety-six other horses, all with their own individual needs, you have to keep going. One horse – however special – is just one among many, and everything else has to go on as normal. I suppose, in a way, it helps. After all, there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do.’

  ‘And what about your staff? What have you told them?’

  ‘Occasionally I send a horse or two to a yard near Petersfield for a few days of TLC. There’s a girl there who does acupuncture – incredibly good – and I’ve told them King pulled up a bit stiff after his race and I’ve sent him there. That’ll satisfy the lads for a few days, and the sad fact is that most of them don’t care much. About three quarters of the lads are foreign. Come from all over the place: Brazil, Czech Republic, Poland, Colombia – you name it! It’s quite common in the industry. The lads come over on a work permit, work here for a year or so earning three or four times what they would back home, and then take their money and go. You can’t blame them, really. For some of them it’s the only way to pay for an education, and there’s not exactly a queue of English youngsters waiting to get into the profession. But it means that there’s often very little interest in the long-term success of the stables; no real loyalty.’

  ‘I didn’t realise,’ Ben said. ‘Why do you think English kids don’t want to come into racing any more?’

  ‘Several reasons. For one thing, it’s hard work and they can earn so much more sitting on their bums playing with computers. And another thing is their size. Kids in this country are huge these days! No good at all for exercising racehorses. Too many Big Macs and not enough activity.’

  ‘So what about your head lad and your office staff?’

  ‘Well, Bess knows, of course, and I’ve had to tell my assistant trainer, but then he’s my son-in-law, so I think we’re safe there. Trent, my head lad in the yard, doesn’t know yet, but he’ll probably start asking awkward questions if King isn’t back in the next couple of days. Even as it is, I think he’s picked up on the atmosphere. Who else is there? Oh, Vicki, Bess’s assistant in the office; she’s only part-time. We haven’t told her. Of course I’ve told my family – Elizabeth, my wife, and my daughters, Helen and Fliss – but none of them knows you’re working for me, for obvious reasons.’

  ‘Meaning that you’d rather they didn’t know how dirty you play?’

  Truman’s eyes narrowed. ‘You must have led a very blameless life, Mr Copperfield. Ah,’ he sat up and lifted his binoculars to his eyes, ‘they’re coming.’

  Starting from a point well below them, the horses set off in pairs to canter steadily for a couple of hundred yards along the floor of the valley and then shift into a gallop as they hit the rising ground. As the first two powered up the incline at what Ben judged to be about three-quarter-speed, he and Truman got out of the Range Rover to get a better view.

  The wind cutting across the ridge was bitter, and Ben zipped up his leather flying-jacket and raised the collar, whereupon Truman furnished him with the information that locally, the spot was known as Windwhistle Hill.

  ‘We’ve got four grass gallops: three longer ones here, and a five-furlong one over the other side of the yard. And there are three all-weather ones, with differing distances and surfaces. One plough, one sand and plastic, and a pig-hair and mushroom-compost one. There’s usually something we can use, whatever the weather.’

  The approaching horses, one bay and one chestnut, were matching stride for stride, their heads dipping in unison, legs striking forward to cover the ground and breath steaming from their widened nostrils to hang in the frosty air. Muscles rippled under clipped coats burnished with gold by the winter sun. Crouched over their withers, the lads stood in the stirrups, letting their hands move with the rhythm of the gallop and suddenly Ben wished, with a passion that surprised him, that he could be in one of those saddles.

  Where had that come from?

  ‘Jewster is being lazy,’ Truman murmured to himself. ‘Why doesn’t he work him with Cokey? How many times have I suggested it?’

  He pulled a mobile phone from the pocket of his coat and pressed a button or two. ‘Trent? Why didn’t you work Jewster with Cokey like I asked you to? … Oh, is he? … Well, Dibble would have been better than Rocky. Rocky wouldn’t inspire anyone to run! … OK, next time.’

  ‘Cokey’s lost a shoe,’ he informed Ben, who, feeling an answer was required, nodded and said, ‘Oh,’ adding, ‘Do you have your own farrier at the yard?’

  ‘Part-time. He’s with us every afternoon.’

  ‘So, tell me about the horses. I’ll need a cover story if I’m going to be around the yard for a day or two, so let’s make believe I really am doing a story on the Gold Cup horses, as I told Rackham. Actually, I might as well do the bloody story – I’m doing all the research. So, do you have any other runners?’

 
‘Yes.’ Truman was looking through his binoculars once more. ‘The chestnut with the white face in the next pair. He’s entered and he’s in with a squeak. He’s owned by a syndicate from the pub in the village. They take it all very seriously – I expect some of them are in that group watching over there.’

  He swung an arm and Ben looked across to see a bunch of perhaps seven or eight people, with binoculars, standing just inside the boundary hedge.

  ‘Do you always have an audience?’

  ‘Not always, but leading up to a big race like this … Ah. Ray’s coming up. Ray Finch, my son-in-law; married to Helen, my eldest.’

  As the next two horses crested the rise, Ben could see someone out to the side and some fifty yards behind, riding on a general-purpose saddle with longer stirrups. His mount, as it drew closer, was obviously an older horse – probably retired, Ben guessed.

  Truman strode over to the newcomer as he dismounted and immediately engaged him in conversation while the horse, held on a loose rein, lost no time in putting his head down to crop the grass.

  Seeing them side by side, Ben thought that Truman and his son-in-law could have been cast from the same mould. Finch was, at a guess, in his early forties and not yet carrying quite as much weight as Truman, but he was of a similar height and his sandy hair was already sparse.

  He wondered idly if Truman’s eldest had seen her husband as a replacement father figure.

  Truman didn’t bother to introduce them and, beyond giving him a brief, curious glance, Finch took no notice of Ben. The discussion mostly concerned the horses, with a few comments thrown in about one or two of the lads. As it drew to a close Truman said, ‘Well, have a word with Davy, would you? If his heart’s not in it, he might just as well move on. He’s no good to us.’

  Finch nodded and made to move away.

  ‘Oh, and by the way, I’ve just had yet another bill from Farm Fuels. What the hell’s going on there? I got Bess to look back through the books and our diesel consumption’s just gone up and up over the last few months.’

  Finch shrugged and shook his head. ‘I suppose we’ve done a few more of the northern meetings, and of course the new lorries are bigger.’